Fragile earth

Quotes

The non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. That State is the best governed which is governed the least.

Mohandas Ghandi

In no longer pretty citiesThere are warrants, forms and chittiesThere are fingers in the kittiesAnd a jackboot on the stair.

V for Vendetta

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Thomas Jefferson

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

John Stuart Mills

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Never give your government any power that you wouldn't also be comfortable entrusting to a genocidal dictator.

The Angry Exile

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C.S. Lewis

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.

Claire Wolfe

The powers delegated to the government must be precisely defined … and clearly be of such extent as that, by no reasonable construction, they can be made to invade the rights and prerogatives intended to be left in the people.

Richard Henry Lee

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

James Madison

A charity that relies in the main part on taxes is no more a charity than a prostitute is your girlfriend.

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

John Adams

Government’s view of the economy can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it.

Ronald Reagan

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness ... There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Angry Places

Wednesday, 25 February 2009

The Beeb are upsetting some people again. They've only gone and hired a one armed presenter for kids TV, and this has become the cue for shock, horror and outrage because a handful of stupid twats got their cocks in a knot and complained to the BBC about Cerrie Burnell. Apparently some parents are concerned that their children will have nightmares or some such shite, or that she's actually not a very good presenter and has been hired for PC reasons. On the latter point who knows? Personally I wouldn't put it past the Beeb to overlook someone with two arms when given the opportunity to tick the disabled box, but we don't know that's what happened and she seems as good as other presenters to me* so who cares? But the Beeb have said they thought Ms Burnell was the best applicant so that's why she got the job, and if so then that's fair enough and how it should be. No presenter, regardless of how many arms they have, is going to please everyone so I don't buy the "she's a crap presenter" thing. One man's meat and all that. Unless the complaint is that she won't be any good at teaching juggling it's entirely subjective, and since there are billions of shit jugglers with two arms and it's hardly a life skill it's fucking irrelevant anyway.

As for the nightmare excuse, I tend to agree with those who feel that a parent who can't come up with something to inform, educate or just bluff their toddlers when awkward questions arise about disabilities are, to put it bluntly, fucked. How are they going to deal with it when their kids ask if it's really the same hamster as they always had, how Santa gets in when there's no chimney, did mummy used to have a cock and did it fall off and what happened to daddy's tits? Admittedly downing enough lager and takeaways might avoid the last question, but we all know kids are capable of asking all sorts of awkward stuff and any sentence that begins "Mummy/Daddy, why..." is a sure sign that you've just entered a minefield and something under your foot just went click - you've just got to wait and find out if that means an explosion either of embarrassment, sadness or just plain tedium, or if the click was harmless and you've got away with it. Birth, death and sex are going to be asked about sooner or later and your kids will expect you to have an answer and be influenced by what you say. What are you going to do, plug them back into the XBox and hope they forget they asked the question in the first place? Can't see that approach working myself. If you can't tell your toddler why the TV lady has only got one arm then you are not only an unimaginative twat who probably should have stuck to masturbation but also in a lot of trouble when the really difficult questions start to come.

But let's all calm down and take a look at the scale of the problem, shall we?

DOZENS of parents have complained to the BBC that a disabled television presenter is scaring their children.

Ok, "dozens" according to the Evening Standard.

...the decision to hire her has prompted a flurry of complaints to the BBC and on parenting message boards, with some of the posts on the CBeebies website becoming so vicious that they had to be removed.

A "flurry" according to the Daily Wail.

Nine official complaints have so far been lodged with the BBC – plus many more blog postings – about 29-year-old children's television presenter Cerrie Burnell, who was born with only one hand.

And "nine" according to the Guardian. Now school maths lessons were a long time ago and I don't know if we were told about a number called "flurry" and I've just forgotten it. And possibly I misunderstood what was meant by "dozens" or "nine". But the bottom line is it sounds to me like the complaints come from a relatively small number of shitwits who are probably still wondering why there are short people in their homes and how to cope with it. It doesn't seem like there is a vast orchestrated campaign to persuade everyone that Cerrie Burnell is a freak who should be kept off the telly, just the deluded ramblings of a few soft cocks who can't cope with their children asking questions. Personally I'm not desperately worried for society and the way it's heading when we might be talking about as few as nine nobbers here. That's point one.

Point two is that this is predictably bringing out every PC type and charidee mouthpiece to take offence, and personally that gets on my tits (the absence of which I will no doubt have to explain if we have kids) as much as this numpties who are scared of their kids' questions. The only person who has any right to have any hurt feelings over these fucktards and their remarks is Cerrie Burnell herself, and it seems she is upset though with the fucking mouthpieces getting the lion's share of the newsprint it's a little hard to tell. But there is this or something much like it buried near the bottom of some articles:

Miss Burnell, who has a four-month-old daughter, said she was upset at the "small-minded" and "terrible" comments.

Miss Burnell said: “It can only be a good thing that parents are using me as a chance to talk disability with their children. It just goes to show how important it is to have positive disabled role models on CBeebies and television in general.”

So here's an idea. Why not let Cerrie Burnell speak for herself? She seems articulate and intelligent to me, and if she had two arms I can't imagine why anyone would bother to take offence on her behalf. I'm all for supporting her and I agree that the complaints are pathetically lame, but since she's still got one hand and a perfectly good voice I'd like to see her have the opportunity herself to raise two fingers and tell the whiners to fuck off. Might not happen exactly like that given this is kiddy TV we're talking about, but then parents who think their kids aren't going to learn bad language sooner or later are deluding themselves on that score too.

*To be honest I don't really know what makes a good, bad or indifferent kiddy TV presenter. I haven't got kids so I'm not going to judge if her presenting style is the right one, if indeed there is a right one. Personally I doubt it and suspect that some kids will like a particular presenter and some won't. From the brief clips online it seems that she's as good as other presenters and assuming she's not telling children to beat each other up and steal toys at play school I don't see what the problem is.

Bill McKay, a parent from Northampton, said: "I turned on the Bedtime Hour expecting to see it hosted by some incredibly hot babe with a dodgy past in home-made pornography.

"Instead I got something that made my children cry and failed to give me an erection."I suppose this was a perfect opportunity to talk to my children about disability but I felt it would be more useful to email the BBC and try to put an end to this young woman's career."

Nice touch, but a little unfair. I think Cerrie Burnell is pretty easy on the eye myself.